The Hammer Horror Omnibus (3 page)

On arriving at the damp little courtroom in which the inquest was to be held, Heitz was peremptorily told by a wizened little clerk that the coroner was likely to call on him as a witness. Before the Professor could protest that he had only just come to the district, the clerk added, “A character witness, of course,” and fussed away.

The courtroom was crowded. Surrounded by these dour men and women in their dark, shabby clothes, Heitz was reminded of nothing so much as a congregation of ragged vultures. They had come for the pickings. They would scratch over the dead—and drive the living away.

The coroner was a lean-featured man with a pouchy jaw. It was clear from the start that his mind was made up on the fundamentals of the case. He wanted to hurry it through and be done with it. Heitz had hoped to learn something of what had really happened—something more than the bare, terrible facts which had brought him here from Berlin—but he realized that there was going to be no deep, analytical probe into the truth.

Inspector Kanof was the first witness. He reported the finding of the girl’s body by a woodcutter who, skirting the forest in the early morning, had seen a flash of color in the dark undergrowth and, after a brief fearful inspection, had hurried down to the village to notify the police. There followed a search for the young man who was known to have been spending a lot of his time with the girl.

He was found hanging from a tree not far from the scene of the crime.

Professor Heitz lowered his head. He was a man whose dignity and self-control meant a great deal to him, and he did not wish these people to see the tears in his eyes.

The drone of voices went on—question and answer, perfunctorily exchanged by men who did not want to stir up too many dark elements.

“When I broke the news of the girl’s death to her father,” Kanof was saying, “he said it was no surprise to him.”

“What did you deduce from that?”

“That he had personal reasons for knowing of Bruno Heitz’s bad reputation.”

“And had you any such personal experience, Inspector?”

“Yes, sir. There were certain incidents . . .”

“Describe them, please.”

“Drunkenness, bad behavior in public. Singing in the streets, starting arguments in the inn—it became so bad that the innkeeper had to throw him out. Many of his opinions verged on blasphemy . . .”

It was too petty, too dreary. The natural exuberance of youth was something alien to the people of Vandorf. Had any of them, Heitz wondered, ever been young? He looked round the room. The faces were sullen and secretive. All right, Bruno had been a young fool—but he was a generous young fool who gave himself rapturously to life and wanted to share his joy with others. Little they would understand of conviviality and friendship!

Then Heitz started. One face stood out from the rest. It was a face which certainly did not belong here. He recognized it, but for a moment could not visualize it in its proper setting. Then he remembered. Namaroff. An educated man, a surgeon, a scientist. He had visited the Heitz home during his days in Berlin, and the Professor had been impressed by the range of his mind. A trifle cold, perhaps—undoubtedly ruthless if the need arose—but the detachment of an educated man was what was needed here at this stage.

Heitz felt a flicker of hope. Something was wrong, but one civilized, knowledgeable voice might begin to put it right. The coroner might not find it so easy to rush over the opinions of Dr. Namaroff.

“Call Janus Cass . . .”

The innkeeper was a great barrel of a man, with all the marks of his trade save the essential one of jollity. His heaviness was that of brutality and a limited imagination. In the witness stand he was like a huge animal, lumbering and unapproachable.

“You are the father of the deceased girl, Sascha.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And landlord of the Saracen Inn.”

“Right, sir.”

“Will you please tell the Court what you know of the relationship between your daughter and the deceased young man.”

“My girl took to him, unfortunately. Said she loved him,” growled Cass. “He took advantage of her and then didn’t want to face the consequences.”

“When you say ‘took advantage of her’ you mean—”

“It’s my belief she was pregnant by him. A thoroughly bad lot. I told Sascha to have nothing to do with him—knew from the time he stayed in my place he was no good—but she wouldn’t listen.”

“She disobeyed you.”

“She did. He talked her into it. A sly tongue he had, that one.”

The coroner nodded, accepting, jotting down a few notes. He asked: “Did you personally observe this man’s addiction to alcohol?”

The invitation to confirm the picture of Bruno Heitz as a drunkard and a wastrel was unmistakable. The coroner was not so much questioning the witness as urging him to say what was required of him. Professor Heitz had difficulty in restraining himself. As a scholar, accustomed to the sifting of evidence and the meticulous checking of every fact before he would even dare to formulate the beginnings of a theory, he was appalled by this perversion of justice. But he knew how little weight his word would carry in this place. They would be glad of the excuse to turn on him.

“Nobody ever had a better chance than I did,” Cass was saying with vicious relish. “Didn’t he stay with me those first few times, before I got on to what he was at? Getting the inn a bad name, he was.”

“A tendency to violence in his cups?” the coroner suggested.

“Well, sir . . .”

If Cass was baulking at this one, he got no chance to make his meaning clear. The coroner briskly dismissed him without waiting for the answer, and went on to the next witness.

“Call Dr. Namaroff.”

Heitz sat up. He looked at the Doctor’s ascetic, arrogant features and almost begged the man to turn and recognize him. He wanted to convey a plea to him—a plea for decency, for the intellectual honesty that must be shared by men of goodwill from the civilized world.

“Will you tell us, Doctor, what in your opinion was the cause of this girl’s death.”

“It was undoubtedly the result of violence,” said Namaroff calmly. “I observed deep abrasions round the forehead as though she had been struck from the front by some sharp instrument. There were indentations in the skull . . .”

He paused. Heitz willed him to go on. Surely any marks on the skull could have been caused when she fell. How had she fallen—what
sort
of abrasion had there been on the forehead—where was the murder weapon and what was there to ally it with Bruno or with anyone else?

“A violent attack,” the coroner prompted Namaroff.

“Undoubtedly.”

“From the front. Carried out, would you say, by someone she knew and from whom she didn’t try to run away?”

“A sound point,” said Namaroff politely.

“Thank you, Doctor. You may step down.”

Again Heitz almost rose from his seat. But even the suggestion of a movement brought a scowl from his neighbor.

Then his name was being called. They were waiting for him to make his way to the witness stand. His hands shook as he took up his position. He was not a short-tempered man but he knew that he was liable to burst out in a rage today; and knew also that it would achieve nothing.

“You are Professor Jules Heitz.”

There was a formal attempt at respect in the coroner’s manner, but it was veiled by a more characteristic indifference.

“I am.”

“Father of the deceased man, Bruno Heitz.”

“Yes.”

“You have heard the evidence before this Court?”

“If you can call it evidence.”

There was a whisper of indrawn breath. The coroner frowned, and went on sharply:

“Did you know the girl concerned?”

“No, sir.”

“From the evidence before me I have the impression that your son was somewhat of a profligate. Would you agree with that?”

Heitz said: “He was a talented artist. His life was of his own choosing.”

“The life of a libertine,” the coroner nodded.

“No. Possibly he had a number of young women in his life. That doesn’t make him a libertine.”

“There was at any rate one particular girl whom he betrayed.”

“I cannot believe that.”

“You are his father.” The coroner shrugged. If it was meant as a comment on the situation, it was either insulting or meaningless.

Heitz said: “There is no clear evidence that my son intended to shirk his obligations to the girl. No evidence that he killed her. The medical report”—he glanced reproachfully at Namaroff, who averted his gaze—“was singularly inadequate. The police findings were no more than—”

“If you have nothing further to contribute to this inquiry,” said the coroner, “you may stand down.”

“I am not ready to stand down.” Heitz lifted his head so that he did not have to meet the savage eyes of the hunched creatures in the courtroom. “We are not considering one isolated case—or, rather, we ought not to be considering just one case. I have read the newspapers, and I am a student of human nature. I have read about the unsolved Vandorf murders . . . and from my brief contact with human beings here I have no doubt at all that everything I have seen and heard has been generated by fear. Particularly what I have heard in this courtroom.”

A bestial snarl rose from the well of the court. The coroner hammered for silence, but his expression made it plain that he sided with his fellow citizens.

He said: “Professor Heitz, in assessing the evidence before us—”

“Evidence which is circumstantial, prejudiced, and contrived,” said Heitz. “Evidence which would never be accepted in any civilized community.”

“Professor Heitz, I must ask you to stand down.”

Bruno’s name would be stained so that this sinister matter could be brought speedily to a close. He had been a stranger, so let him be the scapegoat. The verdict was a foregone conclusion: murder followed by suicide.

“I will say no more.” Heitz stepped down. “But believe me, I shall not rest until I have cleared my son’s good name.”

He went back to his seat like a man running the gauntlet between ranks of savages waiting to pounce.

The coroner made a show of sorting out papers. He then picked up his pen and began to write. When he looked up he said:

“I find that the dead woman was murdered by the man Bruno Heitz, who then, in a fit of remorse, took his own life.”

There was a buzz of approval. The courtroom began to empty. Heitz tried to fight his way through towards Namaroff, but others took a malicious pleasure in impeding him. Namaroff had left and was driving away before the Professor was anywhere near the door.

A youth with vacant eyes and a fixed, revolting grin jostled against Heitz and wagged his head knowingly.

“You’d better watch out. I’m telling you, you’ll be for it.” The local dialect was so thick that the words slurred into one another. “She’ll strike you like she struck the others, eh?
She . . .”

An arm grabbed his shoulder, and the drooling, inbred creature of the valley was roughly bundled out of the room.

As Heitz emerged into the open he was faced by a semicircle of mute, waiting men and women. They made no move to attack him: they simply stood and watched, waiting to make sure that he went away.

He was relieved when the carriage arrived for him and the horses began to strain nobly up the hillside away from Vandorf. The very air seemed clearer over the ridge. Yes, he was relieved to be putting Vandorf behind him at this moment—but he had every intention of returning.

The mutterings of that half-imbecilic youth nagged on in his mind.
She
. . . It could have meant anything or nothing. But it stirred a faint memory. Not of Vandorf itself but of places along a route through Europe—a route leading in from Asia Minor, the track of something strange. Or was he trying to make up a theory before he had checked his facts? Professor Heitz had a voluminous memory and was proud of his ability to select relevant details from it when he needed them; but he was also humble enough to admit that he could not retain everything and that for completeness he needed an equally voluminous library. His library was in Berlin. He had access to no books in Vandorf—if they possessed such things. If he could find some way of studying the sources, letting things fall into place, allowing a suspicion to trigger off one idea and then following it up remorselessly until it combined with others, he might have an answer to what was going on in Vandorf. Yet he would be the first to admit that his speculations were wilder than anything that had been said in that dismal little courtroom today.

His friends—for so, in comparison with the people of the village, his hosts seemed—tactfully asked little about the inquest. They lived close enough to the valley to know what its reputation was. They were glad he had come back unscathed.

Their relief changed to dismay when Heitz announced that he was not returning to Berlin immediately. Bruno had paid rent on the millhouse for some weeks in advance, and Heitz proposed to spend some time there. He wished to carry out some research.

And speaking of research, might he have the privilege of looking up one or two points in his host’s library? As they knew, his special subject was the influence of myth on the aesthetic development of contemporary poets and novelists, and there were one or two complex cross-references which he wished to clear up. Far from his own cherished collection in Berlin, he was rather at a loss.

He spent another night in the house and devoted most of the following day to intensive reading. Then he thanked his host warmly for the generous hospitality, and went back to Vandorf. He chose a circuitous route, approaching from behind Castle Borski and avoiding the village itself so that he could descend unobserved on the millhouse.

Bruno’s paintings were everywhere—a pathetic reminder of his talent and his impulsiveness, and a memorial to the girl his father had never met: a girl living on only in these unfinished sketches and swift portraits, a girl smiling and pouting, stretching out her arms lazily for love and not knowing she was to meet death.

Heitz spent the evening tidying up the place to suit himself and putting away those tragic souvenirs of a shattered happiness.